Shared Sin and Shared Grace

by Dale Russell

It is not often that we get a closer look at Martin Luther King, but a designated holiday is a great opportunity to explore that. My knowledge of the man seems to be limited to news flashes in my brain that takes me to a black and white TV screen in 1965. Along with other civil rights activists, King participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery protest march that year. The brutal attacks on activists by the police were televised into the homes of Americans across the country. Three short years later that same screen revealed he was assassinated.

I had little knowledge of MLK’s personal history. (I’m trusting my grandkids know more.) Obviously, he was a pastor and went to great lengths to document sermons. This week I discovered a portion of his records and determined an amazing parallel between you and I, and the prisoners we interact with.

First, see if this describes any portion of your own life. Next, trade places with the prisoner to see how we may be much closer than we have ever determined before.

“Have you ever done anything, and you felt that you had become a shame to yourself? You feel a sense of shame before your family and before society, and you felt that your integrity never would come back? That your life now was an endless process of meaninglessness and that everything that turned against you, and as you walked the streets you were ashamed to look at anybody, and you felt that everybody was looking at you with scorn? And you went to bed at night, and you tried to pray that you wouldn’t think about it, or you wouldn’t dream about it, but even in the midnight hours you would wake up and discover that it was still plaguing you?

And then, at that moment, you decided to try another method; you decided to turn this thing over to God and lay yourself bare before the Almighty God, and something happened to you, and you could walk out before life and before your family and before yourself and your friends with new meaning. Looked like the life had taken on something new, and you wondered what happened. That was the grace of God. Something that you didn’t deserve, something that you didn’t merit, but something that you so desperately needed in order to live through the experiences of life.”  

(King, “Man’s Sin and God’s Grace,” 1955, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church)

The essence of that last sentence is what Visions of Hope strives to include in all presentations inside prison. It is too important to skip over. God’s grace easily relieves a troubled soul, no matter who’s shoes you are standing in.

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound
That saves a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now I’m found;
Was blind but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
but not only that, ’twas grace my fears relieved.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
’Twas grace that brought me safe thus far,
And it is grace that will lead me home.

Would you like to meet those inmates whose shoes you just traded? Join us in the next prison visit. HERE